“But I tell you I saw him!” cried Azinza. “I saw what happened to Mr. Gideon!”
Mrs. Needle turned on her with cold fury. “Enough of this foolishness…!”
“You have no right to stop her speaking,” said Ragnar, moving up beside Azinza. For a moment he and Mrs. Needle stared at each other and the pure hatred between them made the hairs stir and lift on Tyler’s neck. At last Mrs. Needle waved her hand in disgust and turned away. “Go on,” the big man told Azinza. “Tell what you saw, girl.”
“This is not foolishness,” she said, but she could not quite look Patience Needle in the eye. “My people used to come to me for my dreams. They called me goddess.” She shook her head angrily, her eyes still bright with tears. Tyler felt sorry for her. Gideon might have saved this young woman’s life, but he had also pulled her away from everything she knew and believed. “Last night, I had a strong, strong dream,” she began. “A telling dream like the kind I used to have back home. A great creature with many fingers-as many fingers as the apple tree outside has branches-held Mister Gideon. It hurt him and he fought against it, but he was not strong. And then he… he… ” Azinza’s face crumpled. “He began to melt away…!”
She tried to say more but could not. Weeping, she let little Pema help her to a chair. Babble and upset filled the room.
Mrs. Needle turned on Ragnar. “There! Are you happy to fill these frightened peoples’ heads with such nonsense?” Whatever order there had been a moment ago was gone. Everyone in the Snake Parlor was talking at the same time.
Lucinda sidled up. “I’m scared, Tyler,” she whispered. “Where could Gideon have gone?”
“I can think of a few places.” He was thinking about the washstand mirror and the shadowy world on the other side of it, but he wasn’t going to talk about it out loud: Lucinda was the only person in the house who knew. Still, could Gideon have got into it somehow? Did it have something to do with Mrs. Needle taking the washstand mirror out of the library?
What better place to hide someone you don’t want found? Tyler thought. Just knock them out and shove them through the mirror…!
The more he thought about, the more reasons he discovered that it might be true. But how could he tell the others when he’d been hiding something so important for over a year…?
His thoughts were interrupted as a sudden quiet fell on the room. Mr. Walkwell stood in the front doorway, his narrow, bearded face gray with dust.
“I have been down to the Fault Line,” the farm’s overseer announced. “The bad news is there is no sign of Gideon there-the lock is still on the outside, but I opened it and went down to look and found no recent marks or footprints. I suppose that is also the good news, because if he had entered the Fault Line there would be nothing we could do to follow him. It has now been locked again. No one else go near.”
“Time to begin the search, then!” said Ragnar before Mrs. Needle could say anything. “Hoka, Jeg, the rest of you men, come with me.”
“What if we don’t find him?” Lucinda asked. The faces of the others showed that they had been wondering this too.
It was Ragnar who answered. “That is too hard a question for today, child. While we search things will go on as they have. Mr. Walkwell will run the farm, Mrs. Needle will… will see to things in the house.”
Patience Needle favored him with a poisonous smile. “Thank you for giving me permission to do my job, Ragnar Lodbrok.”
“Enough arguing.” Mr. Walkwell broke his silence. “Back to searching. Search everywhere again. Gideon is old and he might be hurt. Waste no time.” He turned and walked out the door, hooves clicking on the wooden entry hall floor. Most of the men of the farm followed him-but where, Tyler wondered, was Colin Needle? He spotted him a moment later, talking urgently to Lucinda, which bothered Tyler more than it should have. He didn’t want the pale young man being friendly to his sister. It was just… creepy. Creepy and wrong.
“Hey, Needle,” he called. “Needle!”
The older boy shot him a resentful look. “What do you want, Jenkins? I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I think your mother knows something about Gideon disappearing-something she isn’t telling us.”
“Tyler,” Lucinda said warningly, “don’t… ”
He ignored her. “Don’t lie to us, Needle. You know she had something to do with it, don’t you?” Tyler took a step nearer; to his satisfaction, Colin took a step back.
“Just shut up, Jenkins!” sad the older boy. “You don’t know anything. You’re busy ruining everything while people like me are trying to save this place.”
“Stop it, both of you!” Lucinda cried, but Tyler was just getting started.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Save the farm… like when you tried to sell Meseret’s egg to the person Gideon hates most in the world? When you pretty much gave away the secret of this place? Yeah, you really care…!”
Tears actually came into Colin Needle’s eyes. He balled his fists and for a moment Tyler thought the older boy might take a swing at him, but instead Colin turned and hurried out of the Snake Parlor toward the front door.
Tyler stared after him. “What’s his problem?”
“You’re a creep, Tyler Jenkins,” Lucinda said. “He came to me for help! He wanted someone to listen to him! And he might have had something important to say about Gideon, but no, you had to be… you had to be… ” She turned and stomped out of the room, headed for the kitchen. As the door fell shut behind her, she shouted back, “
… A big creep!”
“Huh?” Tyler said it out loud, even though he was now the only person left in the room. “I don’t get it? What did I do?”
Chapter 11
“Oh, sweet! Careful, now…!” Lucinda laughed a little nervously as Desta took another carrot from her hand. Lucinda had just discovered to her astonished delight that Desta’s long tongue was as blue as a summertime sky. “Will it stay that color?” she asked.
Ragnar looked down from the landing above where he was hosing out the cockatrice cages. “I do not know. Her mother and father are not that way, but they might have changed-I don’t remember what color tongues they had as young worms.” He laughed. The sound startled the displaced cockatrices, which hissed at him from their temporary wire cages.
“Where is Haneb today?” Lucinda asked. “I thought he was the one who took care of the dragons?”
Ragnar shrugged as he swept the water toward the drain in the concrete floor. “Simos has taken him and your brother and others to walk the hills and canyons. There are many trees and deep spots there which could hide… someone.”
A man’s body, he had almost said. Because now that he was three days missing, Ragnar, Lucinda, and everyone else knew Gideon Goldring might very well be dead. A cloud of fear hung over Ordinary Farm.
Lucinda swallowed hard. “Ragnar? What if Uncle Gideon doesn’t come back? What if we never find him? What… what happens next?”
Who will get the farm? That was what she was really asking. Who will take charge of this strangest, most wonderful place on earth?
When the Norseman had all the creatures back in their cage he latched the door, then pulled off the hood of the hazard suit he wore to protect himself from the creatures’ poisonous saliva. He clanked down the stairs to join Lucinda as the cockatrices stepped awkwardly around the puddles, hissing at each new outrage to their familiar home-sawdust and sand now clean and new, their droppings washed from every surface.
“What happens if he’s really gone?” she asked again.
“Here you make a testament, yes?” Ragnar asked her. “A… will? Writing down how your treasure will be shared after you are dead. But first someone-one of the city-chiefs, what are they called…?”
She thought for a moment. “Police? Government?”